Thursday, February 5, 2015

Herons in Louisiana

Not far out of New Orleans lies the Bayou Sauvage NWR. There is a good access point around nine miles due east of NO city centre on U. S. Hwy. 90, check the website at www.bayousauvage.fws.gov
My French isn't brilliant but I translate this as Savage or Wild Bayou. It's neither, being a quiet, peaceful and quite placid place and a really good spot to get in a bit of birding and to escape the really wild side which you will find down on Bourbon Street! We visited a couple of times, primarily in the afternoon and early evening and we managed a good number of species. It is a good site for water birds particularly ducks and herons although waders were pretty scarce. American Avocet, Black-necked Stilt, Kildeer, Short-billed Dowitcher and Snipe being the only ones we managed to locate. Herons though were much in evidence and I managed to get reasonable photographs of seven species although the shots of Green Heron are so bad I would not post them on my blog. If you ever visit south-east Louisiana or New Orleans I recommend spending some time out on the Wild Bayou!